Not a Love Song
by Sat-Isis
Summary: This is not a love song, but it might be - could be. A version of what would have happened if Sansa had thrown Joffrey from the battlements. Sandor Clegane features heavily in the narrative alongside Sansa Stark, as does musical anachronism. Think of it as almost sansan. Quoted text is in italics and belongs to GRRM.
1. Chapter 1

_A GAME OF THRONES, Chapter 67:_

_"After my name day feast, I'm going to raise a host and kill your brother myself. That's what I'll give you, Lady Sansa. Your brother's head."_

_A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, "Maybe my brother will give me your head."_

_Joffrey scowled. "You must never mock me like that. A true wife does not mock her lord. Ser Meryn, teach her."_

_This time the knight grasped her beneath the jaw and held her head still as he struck her. He hit her twice, left to right, and harder, right to left. Her lip split and blood ran down her chin, to mingle with the salt of her tears._

_"You shouldn't be crying all the time," Joffrey told her. "You're more pretty when you smile and laugh."_

_Sansa made herself smile, afraid that he would have Ser Meryn hit her again if she did not, but it was no good, the king still shook his head. "Wipe off the blood, you're all messy."_

_The outer parapet came up to her chin, but along the inner edge of the walk was nothing, nothing but a long plunge to the bailey seventy or eighty feet below. All it would take was a shove, she told herself. He was standing right there, right there, smirking at her with those fat wormlips. You could do it, she told herself. You could. Do it right now. It wouldn't even matter if she went over with him. It wouldn't matter at all._

And she did it.

Sansa wiped the blood from her face with a delicate, white hand. The drone of detritivorous insects was so loud it was the only thing she could hear, as if they were buzzing inside her head instead of about the severed heads of her people. Sansa was still smiling when she collided into Joffrey. The king looked as though he had the wind knocked out of him. He was thrown backwards a pace and on one foot he teetered on the edge of the walk, waving his arms to regain his balance.

Sansa was jerked back from the edge from behind, just as Joffrey wheeled his arms in her direction with a look of abject panic on his paling face. She reached out to him, as a matter of course, and he snatched at her sleeve. When her sleeve ripped, she tried to shrink back into the man behind her, but Joffrey had gotten hold of her arm and as he slipped off the edge Sansa surged forward with him.

"NO," came a frightened growl from behind that was inaudible under Sansa's little scream. Metal slammed against the stone walk as loud as thunder, then screeched as it snagged across the stones. Sansa's shoulders exploded as though struck by lightning. But she was no longer falling and when she looked up it was to see Sandor Clegane, his chest pressed flat against the walk, his arms draped over the edge, and his hands digging into her forearm. He had caught her and was keeping her from falling, his ugly face twisted with the effort of holding onto her as Joffrey struggled to find purchase against her body.

"Grab my legs, damn you," Clegane roared at the other Kingsguard as he slithered further forward towards the edge of the precipice. "Pull us back!" Ser Meryn came down on his knees and grabbed at Clegane's ankles.

Sansa struggled against Joffrey; he was hurting her as he tried to climb her body back up to the walk. He kept slipping, not strong enough to hoist himself up, and the hand that he grasped was the one slick with her blood. Then Joffrey was no longer holding onto the hand at all, but his hands had grasped onto her skirts, her thigh, her knee, until he dangled from one hand clutching onto her ankle.

Sansa looked up again at Clegane and tried to bring her other arm up and grasp onto his hands holding her. Joffrey tried to do the same with her feet and each time he did so she was jostled so much that she could not latch onto Clegane. She looked down, beyond the terrified face of the King, and saw that no one in the bailey had any clue as to what was going on. No one was looking up. Sansa looked up again and saw no face save Sandor Clegane's and a heartbeat thudded through her entire body.

"Don't you dare," Clegane rasped. Had he felt her heartbeat in her arm he held? Did he know what it meant? She looked down and could see nothing but Joffrey's absolute panic and she wonder why he was not screaming as she kicked his hand on her ankle with her other foot. "Don't you dare," Clegane repeated. Sansa looked back up at him, at his imploring face, sweaty and strained with the effort of holding two squirming youths up. "Don't do it," Clegane said, was he begging or commanding?

But now Joffrey's hand was clamped over her slipper and Sansa, by feel alone, toed her foot out of her slipper. Clegane screamed, but not Joffrey, and Sansa wished she had not looked back down: Joffrey's cloak fluttered like the wings of a bird, one hand still holding her slipper. His eyes and wormy lips were thrown wide open in shock. He hit the ground head first, his skull exploding.

Sansa did not remember anything after that, save for the darkness.

-end chapter one-


	2. Chapter 2

The Little Bird had fainted dead away and the only good thing about dead weight was that it did not struggle. Trant was pulling him from the edge by his ankles and making slow, clumsy work of it. People down below were gathering excitedly towards the body like swarming ants and Clegane saw the exact moment when someone realized it was the King.

"Fuck," Clegane bit out as he rolled his body to the side and began hauling the girl over the edge. "Take her," he said to Ser Meryn as he struggled to get up. Trant picked her up and Sandor was able to rise to his feet. "Where is the King?" the knight asked, a look of confusion on his sly face. Clegane threw a look over his shoulder, "Down there." Ser Meryn's confusion deepened, "Is he alright?" "He's having a tea party," Sandor said laconically, then followed it up with a savage, "No, you dumb fuck, he's dead."

Trant paled and dropped the Little Bird to the floor, she collapsed like a dead flower. "She pushed him. She _pushed_ him." "No, she didn't," Clegane said with sudden menace as he shifted his stance, "The King lost his balance and he fell. He was too close to the edge." What was he doing? "She pushed him," Ser Meryn said again, "She _pushed_ him and _you let her_." There it was; there was the implication. "You didn't see a thing," the Hound rasped at him, stepping closer. The knight's droopy eyes glanced to the edge, "What are you going to do? Throw me over too?" "No," the Hound said as he stepped forward again, herding Trant backwards under the shaded archway.

Away from spying eyes down below, the Hound lunged forth and snatched Ser Meryn's dagger from his belt. Trant turned with the intention of running when the Hound wrapped him in a deathly embrace from behind and thrust the dagger up under his chest plate and into the knight's belly, piercing his diaphragm. "No," the Hound whispered dreadfully into Ser Meryn's ear, "I'm not going to _push_ you. I'm going to have to tell everyone how _ashamed_ you were at having _failed_ to protect your King." He wriggled and twisted the blade, making the knight tremble in breathless, silent screaming, "So _ashamed_, that you threw yourself on your blade." The Hound forced Trant's hand over the hilt of his own dagger and then slammed him face first onto the stone walk. Unconscious, the knight would bleed out soon enough; too soon to be questioned, anyway. The Hound turned his back on the dying man and walked into the sunlight.

Sandor Clegane took his little piece of cloth and used it to wipe Ser Meryn's blood off his hand. It was the same bit of fabric he had been poised to use on the Little Bird, to wipe the blood from her lip, her chin. He knelt down beside her prone form, folded the cloth over in his hands, and used a clean corner to dab at her broken lip. Sandor then swept the cloth from her chin down to her throat, lifting the trail of blood. She had a long, white throat. It was elegant; like a swan's or an egret's.

What was he doing? Sandor knew he would have to choose. He had known that the instant he felt that shudder run through her, before the King fell.

Screaming roared up from the bailey and Clegane glanced down to have his suspicions confirmed. It was the lioness mourning her cub.

Cersei had rushed to the body of her son and when she saw him laid out so spectacularly she doubled over in anguish and screamed. She was still screaming as she bent over his corpse, clutching at his chest. Various courtiers tried to attend to her, but she threw them back when they dared to touch her. Cersei could not touch her son's cheek or stroke his head because it lay in pieces; instead she picked up his hands. One hand still clutched the slipper and when Cersei took it from her son's cooling, dead hand she knew whose slipper it was. She looked up to the parapets where the severed heads looked on in mockery of the headless King.

Sandor Clegane could feel the thoughts turning in her mind, could feel them in his bones, and knew it was only a matter of time before the Queen Regent came upon them in a rage demanding that Lady Sansa's head be put up with the rest of the Northern traitors. He thought on what to do, on what to say. Ser Meryn Trant would have nothing to say, but what of the Little Bird? What was he doing?

"Wake up, Little Bird, the Lioness is coming and she means to have your head," Sandor called to her, shaking her gently by the shoulders. She did not rouse and he put a hand over her collarbone to feel for her breath and heartbeat. The Little Bird's heart did not flutter, but was slow and deep as a drumbeat and her breath crept slowly into and out of the rhythm. She would not rouse for some time, perhaps not at all if her head had hit the stones when Ser Meryn dropped her. She might wake up like Lollys Stokeworth.

Clegane picked her up like he would a puppy and slid her over his shoulder. He had taken her from her bed and now he would put her back in it. Sandor stepped over Trant's bleeding body. He needed time to think. No. What was he doing? The simplest answer would be the best. Sandor Clegane would tell all the truth but tell it slant.

-end chapter two-


End file.
